Congressman Oscar Callaway lost his Congressional election for opposing US entry into WW 1. Before he left office, he demanded investigation into JP Morgan & Co for purchasing control over America’s leading 25 newspapers in order to propagandize US public opinion in favor of his corporate and banking interests, including profits from US participation in the war. Mr. Callaway alleged he had the evidence to prove Morgan associates were working as editors to select and edit articles, with the press receiving monthly payments for their allegiance to Morgan.

One of the leading papers, The New York Times, printed the story of Congressman Callaway’s call for investigation from Washington, D.C., but the editor chose a curious obfuscating headline:

The US eventually followed “opinion leaders” into the war, despite no national security risk from the sinking of a British ship (Lusitania) carrying over four million rounds of ammunition to kill Germans, and Germany’s offer to Mexico to attack the US with an empty promise of German help if, and only if, the US declared war on Germany first (Zimmermann telegram; Mexico rejected the offer immediately as a military impossibility and a ploy for Americans to busy themselves killing Mexicans instead of Germans). The US then imprisoned people who questioned the war, including US candidates for President.

Both my grandfathers risked their lives in the American Expeditionary Force, as did your relatives, in a war media-fed to the public with lies of commission and omission.

I found no follow-up report of Mr. Callaway’s request for investigation. However, we have abundant evidence that US corporate media is controlled for propaganda in our world of the present to cover-up the US’ history of unlawful wars. Consider this as one example:

The Church Senate Committee hearings had the cooperation of CIA Director William Colby’s testimony that over 400 CIA operatives were controlling US corporate media reporting on specific issues of national interest in what they called Operation Mockingbird. This stunning testimony was then confirmed by Pulitzer Prize reporter Carl Bernstein’s research and reporting. Of course, corporate media refused to publish Bernstein’s article and it became the cover-story for Rolling Stone.

The media is a business that like all businesses is driven by the bottom line: it must make a profit to stay in business. It’s reporters must, therefore, write articles that motivate its readers to come back for more and who will therefore become loyal customers.

This requires sensationalism and sensationalism doesn’t lend itself to the truth. Consequently, no one should expect truth to be of paramount importance to the media, especially being the Author of truth is of little significance to the mainline media sources.

Deuteronomy 8:3 charges us to live “by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of Yahweh.” The word of everyone else should only be accepted based upon the criterion of “two or three witnesses,” per 2 Corinthians 13:1.5 Seldom is this statute observed by the media. Instead, they find their own preferred sources that contribute to their desired sensationalism (e.g., the Southern Poverty Law Center), citing them as their experts, and then broad brush everyone they’ve targeted as the same. Truthful, unbiased testimony is seldom the objective.

Whereas the bottom line is of paramount necessity, it’s not the media’s paramount objective. The media is not impartial. It has an agenda like everyone else. To know what that agenda is, one needs to ascertain whether the media is known for being conservative or liberal? As for the mainline media, it should be self-apparent that theirs is not a conservative agenda.

The impression of an independent press in America is part of its illusion. In 1898, at an annual dinner of the American Press Association, John Swinton, the one-time editor-in-chief of the New York Times, was called upon to toast journalism and America’s free press. He responded in a surprising way:

“There is no such thing in America as an independent press, unless it is in the country towns. You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to write his honest opinions, and if you did you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid $150.00 a week for keeping my honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with—others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things—and any of you who would be so foolish as to write his honest opinions would be out on the street looking for another job. The business of the New York journalist is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to revile, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell his race and his country for his daily bread. You know this and I know it, and what folly is this to be toasting an “Independent Press.” We are tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are jumping-jacks; they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.” (John Swinton (1829-1901), Editor-In-Chief of the New York Times, speech at an annual dinner of the American Press Association, sponsored by the New York Press Club, quoted by Upton Sinclair, The Cry for Justice: An Anthology of the Literature of Social Protest (New York, NY: Lyle Stuart Inc., 1963) p. 482.)

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